The Impact of Multilingualism on Reporting Domestic Violence in Mozambique

ABSTRACT

This article examines the linguistic environment in which police and justice agencies conduct interviews in domestic violence cases in Maputo, Mozambique. In Maputo, most people speak one or more African languages and many do not speak the official language, Portuguese, fluently. Moreover, a complex justice environment in Maputo incorporates customary law such as community-based mediation. This article examines justice and civil society stakeholder attitudes towards the role of language in the justice system. Interviews with staff from ten agencies indicate that stakeholders recognise the positive value for victim- survivors of domestic violence to tell their story in their own language. However, stakeholder agencies sometimes act as “linguistic gate-keepers” and the authors conclude that a suitable first step in improving the state’s response to domestic violence is the development of tools to support agency staff at all levels in explaining legal terminology and processes in simple Portuguese, or local language translations.

Keywords:

• police interviewing
• language diversity
• legal pluralism
• violence against women
• access to justice
• forensic linguistics